Back for a second year and in my opinion, an new annual event is the Architecture Record Cocktail Napkin Sketch Contest. More than 1,200 entries from 400 entrants is a great showing for just the second year and this years winners are a definite step up from last years. Award winners are in two categories, professional architects and nonprofessionals (including students and designers). While I do feel that the designers need to be lumped into the professional category, I am sure many parts of the competition will be refined in years to come.

Winner, Professional
The prize for the best-in-show cocktail napkin sketch by a professional goes to Zeljko Toncic for his drawing of Antonio Gaudi’s Casa Milà, in Barcelona. The jury found it to be quirkily evocative of the 1910 landmark. Toncic, who has practiced for 33 years, says he has sketched the building before but this was the first time he dealt with the difficult medium of the cocktail napkin. “The paper is so soft and absorbs ink readily that maintaining control is tricky,” he notes. “I was trying to capture the essence of the structure without going into extreme detail.”

Winner, Non-professional
The winning cocktail napkin sketch by a nonprofessional was drawn by Amanda Prosser, who received her M.Arch. from Kansas State University. With jobs in architecture so scarce, she currently works for a life insurance firm. The jury found Prosser’s sketch of Notre Dame du Haut, Le Corbusier’s famous chapel at Ronchamp, France (1954), to exhibit a startling economy and elegance of line. When Prosser visited Ronchamp as a student, she drew the building in a sketchbook with her eyes closed. “Back in Topeka, I decided to see if I could do it on a cocktail napkin with an extra-fine black ballpoint pen,” she says. “I did it again without opening my eyes.”

The jury awarded cocktail napkin sketches that reflect the spontaneous act of creativity underlyling this ephemeral art form. While a number of entrants treated the cocktail napkin sketch as an exercise in more time-consuming rendering, the jurors admired the artistry of these exercises and included several runners-up that belong to this category.

Kyle Reis, Planner, Cooper Carry, Atlanta, GA
The jury awarded cocktail napkin sketches that reflect the spontaneous act of creativity underlyling this ephemeral art form. While a number of entrants treated the cocktail napkin sketch as an exercise in more time-consuming rendering, the jurors admired the artistry of these exercises and included several runners-up that belong to this category.

Contestants were asked to submit sketches on a 5-inch-square cocktail napkin, a stipulation that many blithely ignored. But Record’s jury stuck by the rules—with one exception: a tiny, delicate model of a church by Scott Grove (an artist) in which the cocktail napkin was made to act like balsa wood. Record created an “hors de concour” (out of the running) award. We couldn’t resist it.

Vlad Zadneprianski, Project Manager, TPG Architecture, New York, NY
Madcap entries from this year’s contest included a series of plays-on-words, portraits, and new conceptualizations of notable monuments. A series of highlights from those submissions follows.

Tanya Davis, Designer, Fennell Design, Rapid City, SD-pictured
We received a number of sketches of Le Corbusier’s acclaimed Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France (1954). Here is a selection of those napkins, all of which shed new light on this classic Modern landmark.